The Univ. of Florida has presented a $100M plan for "facility upgrades in football, baseball and softball" to its athletic department's BOD, according to Kevin Brockway of the GAINESVILLE SUN. The plan calls for a "stand-alone, 100,000-square-foot" football facility adjacent to the practice fields that would "include a locker room, weight room, training room, wet area, offices for football coaches, team meeting rooms, a recruiting lounge and an open foyer area for display of trophies." Canopies have been proposed for McKethan Stadium, UF's baseball park, that will "provide shade for fans in sections behind home plate and down portions of the first and third base lines." There also would be an additional 400 club seats "underneath the canopy overhangs that would increase stadium capacity to 6,000." There also are plans to expand seating at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium, the softball park, to 2,500, as well as the addition of more "restrooms, concession areas, renovation of the press box, and a shading structure for three of the sections behind home plate and down the first and third base lines." The "next step is to get approval from the UAA board for funding." Outgoing UF AD Jeremy Foley said that he "expects the funds to materialize through a combination of borrowing and raising money." Florida’s current athletics debt carried is at $91M (GAINESVILLE SUN, 9/17). In Orlando, Edgar Thomson noted UF's "'master plan' for facilities upgrades has been in the works for the past 12 months." The latest project proposals will be "one of Foley's final acts as AD" (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 9/17). The AP's Mark Long wrote it has become "obvious that Florida's facilities were not on par with some of the biggest spenders" in the SEC and "other high-profile programs" (AP, 9/16).
JOB REQUIREMENTS: UF President Kent Fuchs last week addressed the school's search for a new AD, saying, "We're going to get someone wonderful that we're going to be proud of, for not just the appointment, but someone who is going to take this incredible program ever further." North Carolina's Bubba Cunningham and Arizona's Greg Byrne previously had been rumored to land at UF, and Fuchs said, "We want someone, in terms of their leadership experience, who has been a sitting athletic director at one of the top conferences, at a great university. So that narrows it down pretty much to the sitting athletic directors at what are called the power conferences" ("Sportscene," ESPN Radio 850 Gainesville, 9/14).
